WHAT ATTRACTED YOUR ATTENTION TODAY?

[Stanley]

You'll have it a bit warmer this morning but not much.
Guess what has my undivided attention......

[Big Kev]

Redundancy consultation, merry Christmas

[Nolic]

Fingers crossed for you Kev. Nolic

[Big Kev]

Fingers crossed for you Kev. Nolic

Cheers Colin

[Wendyf]

Hope it turns out OK for you Kev.

[Moh]

Good luck Kev.

[Moh]

Just heard Nico Rosberg has retired from Formula 1 with immediate effect - just won F1 Championship!

[Wendyf]

Just heard Nico Rosberg has retired from Formula 1 with immediate effect - just won F1 Championship!

It will be interesting to see who Mercedes replace him with.

[Moh]

True - he is only 31 must have made enough money to retire on. seems very sudden.

[Stanley]

My impression of Rosberg is that he drove on his nerves, I don't think he enjoys it like Lewis does. There could be more to this than meets the eye.
I watched modern traffic for six hours as Margaret drove us to Marmalade and back. Thank god I don't drive any more, the roads are a nightmare and I couldn't believe some of the bad driving I saw..... Include me out! Between us, Mick and I have quite a lot of miles on the clock and he agreed absolutely.

[Tizer]

We had to drive to a local town and back on winding country roads the other day for an appointment when we had thick freezing fog and the car thermometer was showing between 0 and -1 degrees. The fastest safe speed was 40mph but I had cars pushing behind me wanting to overtake and you could tell the drivers were agitated.

There's more fuss about tallow in the new plastic £5 banknotes today with a vegetarian restaurant refusing to accept them. It's been stirred up to a daft fat level with some news stories talking about `meat' and `suet' in the notes. Innovia who make the polymer have checked with their chemical suppliers and say that a resin they use contains up to a maximum of one part per million of the fat. This resin is used in the polymer notes at a level of 1%. The bottom line is that the notes contain less than 1 part of tallow per 100,000,000 parts of banknote; that's equivalent to a salt spoon quantity (1 gram) in every 100 tons of tallow. It's probably used as a lubricant to help the flow of beads and admittedly, the manufacturers of the resin could use a vegetarian fat instead - but tallow is slightly cheaper and we all know that accountants now run companies, not technical people. But the vegetarians and the news media should look a bit further before they make such a fuss. Innovia supplies the same polymer to 23 other countries where it's used in many products including banknotes. And tallow will be very commonly used worldwide in many products; after all it's a natural product and many people want that instead of man-made materials. Trade is global now and I'd guess that vegetarians are handling things containing this level of tallow every day. The analytical equipment used in laboratories is now so sensitive that you can detect extremely low levels of all sorts of chemicals in all sorts of materials at vanishingly low concentrations.

[Tripps]

Re tallow in fivers. .

The Rainbow Vegetarian Café/Restaurant has been catering for people with food allergies and special requirements “long before these things became popular”.
Mrs Meijland added: "Our whole business is based around not having dead animal products on the premises." Vegetarians and vegans reacted with fury after it emerged the Bank of England used animal fat to make its new notes. More than 120,000 people have signed a petition against the use of tallow to manufacture the new polymer notes, which were released in September.

I'm trying to visualise a 'furious vegan' , and I just love the thought of the time when allergies weren't popular. Didn't something of the sort trigger the 'Indian Mutiny' in 1857? Tricky stuff tallow.

[Stanley]

Dead right David, Paper cartridges containing the ball and charge that were protected by either tallow or mutton fat and you had to bite the cartridge in two to use it. Do Vegans wear leather shoes? Nobody can avoid anything 100% in the modern environment and it's all made of Star Dust anyway.
The other thing that always annoys me is the fact that if everybody went Vegan tomorrow there would have to be the biggest mass slaughter of cuddly animals the world has ever seen and world agriculture would collapse because it's dung that keeps the land fertile.....
Later. A most unusual occurrence during the reading of the Shipping Forecast by Tomasz Schafernaker. He broke down for some reason half way through reading the forecast for Inshore Waters and the regular announcer had to finish the forecast.
See THIS for a BBC report on the imminent closure of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. It will be a disgrace if we lose this historic works, it must be saved and allowed to carry on!

[chinatyke]

Do Vegans wear leather shoes?

Do Vegans avoid each other?

[Stanley]

Kev, I haven't been paying full attention over the last few days and missed your post about redundancy. Isn't it bloody marvellous how these things are timed just before Xmas! I hope it goes well but if it doesn't, watch the buggers and check their calculations. I don't know if it applies now but a favourite ploy was to calculate the payment on basic wage when it should have been take-home pay with overtime and bonuses included. They tried this one on me at Bancroft..... Needless to say it didn't work!

[David Whipp]

Work underway on the base for our new emergency store off West Close Road.

Two containers will be kept there with sandbags and equipment for use in case of emergency.

The work is being funded from a £10,000 grant the town council applied for a few months ago from the Community Foundation for Lancashire.

[Big Kev]

Kev, I haven't been paying full attention over the last few days and missed your post about redundancy. Isn't it bloody marvellous how these things are timed just before Xmas! I hope it goes well but if it doesn't, watch the buggers and check their calculations. I don't know if it applies now but a favourite ploy was to calculate the payment on basic wage when it should have been take-home pay with overtime and bonuses included. They tried this one on me at Bancroft..... Needless to say it didn't work!

My first comment when they told me was "Merry Christmas". My salary is fixed so it's a fairly straightforward calculation, I finish December 31st.

[chinatyke]

Kev, I haven't been paying full attention over the last few days and missed your post about redundancy. Isn't it bloody marvellous how these things are timed just before Xmas! I hope it goes well but if it doesn't, watch the buggers and check their calculations. I don't know if it applies now but a favourite ploy was to calculate the payment on basic wage when it should have been take-home pay with overtime and bonuses included. They tried this one on me at Bancroft..... Needless to say it didn't work!

My first comment when they told me was "Merry Christmas". My salary is fixed so it's a fairly straightforward calculation, I finish December 31st.

Commiserations, Kevin. I've known a few people who have been in this situation, myself and Stanley included, and they have done things they never thought of trying whilst they were working for a company, and gone on to be very successful at what they tried. You'll get other offers if your work ethics and reputation are good. It's a new door opening. Best wishes for your future.

[Stanley]

Dead right China. It was the trigger for new fields for me and in the end they worked out fine. I always remember bumping into Peter Gooby in Barlick shortly after it became known I was going to Lancaster. He told me that many people admired my courage. I told him he was wrong, it was simple desperation! It all worked out fine in the end. My only advice is to look sideways, we get blinkered when we are comfortable in a job.
The other thing that grabbed me was the fine snooker I watched yesterday. My Mate Ronnie lost but my god, did they both show us how the game should be played......

[Whyperion]

Whitechapel Bell Foundry premises have already been sold (presumably either will be developed insenstively) or smothered by developement all around (like Battersea Power Station has been)
Whitechapel Bell Foundry's business is still for sale, presumably either to be carried out at alternate location or rent maybe paid for its existing.

[Stanley]

I remember seeing a film once on TV, "To Cast a Bell". It followed the process of bell-founding and the commentary was a description of the process written down by a monk almost a thousand years ago. I have an idea it was filmed at Whitechapel.

[Tripps]

The true spirit of Christmas.

I got my first Christmas card yesterday. One of my regulars, and always first, and very welcome. It had a robin in front of a sprig of holly in the snow. So far so good - however the robin was sitting on top of a sheathed kukri which was plunged into the snow. The card was for the benefit of the Ghurka Welfare Trust. Ghurkas by the way, I believe are largely Hindu.

[Tizer]

Do Vegans wear leather shoes?

Do Vegans avoid each other?

Do vegans bite their finger nails?

Robins...there's a cartoon in The Times of two robins. One has a bigger red patch on its chest and it's saying to the other one "I've had breast enhancement".

[Stanley]

Toto Wolf says Mercedes are considering replacing Rosberg with Alonso. That had occurred to me...... It would be a brilliant choice.

[Big Kev]

Kev, I haven't been paying full attention over the last few days and missed your post about redundancy. Isn't it bloody marvellous how these things are timed just before Xmas! I hope it goes well but if it doesn't, watch the buggers and check their calculations. I don't know if it applies now but a favourite ploy was to calculate the payment on basic wage when it should have been take-home pay with overtime and bonuses included. They tried this one on me at Bancroft..... Needless to say it didn't work!

My first comment when they told me was "Merry Christmas". My salary is fixed so it's a fairly straightforward calculation, I finish December 31st.

Redeployment could be on offer, I won't get any redundancy payout but I will have a job, things could be looking up :=_